WHO: Gregory & Anabel Marple WHEN: 8/27 WHERE: The Marple House SUMMARY: Gregory asks Anabel about the thing. (Read the narrative first!) WARNINGS: Mentions of death and being involved with the death that is discussed. Additionally, not a great log for any Gregory/Anabel shippers that might be out there.
Anabel had a bowl to her left that she was placing all the vegetables she was picking from the garden, and to her right was a smaller bowl for the basil. She was harvesting most of that at this point. She’d bought all the ingredients she needed earlier in the week in order to make a big batch of pesto she could store to last them through the winter. It was always much better that way than using store bought.
At the sound of footsteps she turned to see her husband walk out outside. “Hello, dear.”
It was almost like a dream, the necklace weighted heavy in his hand. The stones dug into his hand as they were hidden within his hand. The sun was almost startling as he stepped outside, to see Anabel in the garden.
“It’s a bit warm out here, love.” he came up with some manner of an excuse. “Would you mind stepping in for a moment? Maybe get some lemonade?”
The suggestion itself wasn’t particularly concerning but it was Gregory’s tone of voice. It was neither his concerned voice or his angry voice. It was something so subtly different from his usual tone that Anabel thought no one else might have been able to recognize a difference.
She followed him inside, concerned. Once they were inside, in the relative private (or whatever private could be when you had two adult children that were always coming and going), she asked, “Is everything alright?”
“Yes. No.” The words seemed to jumble out as he took a breath to begin thinking as well as speaking. “I was up in the attic looking for our water guns. You had asked for them. Well I had looked for them. And haven’t located them yet.”
The weight was a reminder. So he held up his hand, opening it up to reveal the necklace inside. I found this with some of Eva’s old things. It’s. There’s a remarkable resemblance to one Cora had, don’t you think?”
Anabel was not shocked to see the necklace, though she hadn’t realized this was what it was about until he revealed the piece of jewelry he had hidden in his hand. She set down the bowls on the countertop, then began picking the basil off the stems.
“Actually, it bears such a remarkable resemblance to one of Cora’s pieces because it is one of Cora’s necklaces. It’s kind of a complicated story which is why I’d stored it up in the attic to begin with.” The hiding place had worked for over twenty years, at least.
“Oh really?” Gregory asked, attempting to keep accusation and confusion out of his voice. “And I'm certainly up for what story this would be.”
“It doesn’t quite sound believable. Or, at least, that’s what I had feared which is why I hid it away after the fire.” She shrugged her shoulders. “It was a sort of game. I started it, really. At one of their parties I found it far too easy to slip into their room and take something. And the next time Cora and I scheduled a lunch I would wear the piece of jewelry I’d stolen and given it back, obviously.”
“Obviously.” Gregory’s voice sounded dry even to his own ears.
Anabel frowned. “Well, say what you want to say, Gregory.”
“You’ve been hiding a dead woman's necklace in our attic for 20 years!” Gregory shook his head in disbelief. “And you never told me? And I'm supposed to believe now it was just a gag?”
Gregory’s anger was an uncomfortable thing. However, Anabel didn’t want to minimize what he was feeling. “I thought as few people as possible knew about it, the better. I was sure if I gave it back to Ed I would be accused of something else.”
“As few people as possible?” His head almost seemed to swivel at that. “Who else knows?”
Anabel shook her head. “No one else. As few people as possible meaning I didn’t want anyone outside of myself to know.”
“Belle.” Gregory was not sure he had ever had a moment that he could truly describe as flabbergasted. But here it was. “This is all a bit hard to believe. If it was a running gag why not tell anyone?”
“I think that fact that you won’t believe me is proving my point.” Afterall, if the person who knew and trusted her best didn’t believe her, why would anyone else? She sighed. “Why don’t you tell me what you think happened then.”
“Well I don’t know!” Gregory held up his hands. “I thought you told me things, but apparently not. And I’ve had a dead woman’s necklace in my attic since she died, which is a bit concerning you know.”
“Gregory, I swear that I have not kept much from you throughout the years,” Anabel promised. “This was one mistake of mine that I thought was better kept away. Everyone was hungry for a scapegoat and I had two young children who I did not want to be unable to see if I were imprisoned for a crime I didn’t commit just because I have a necklace that I shouldn’t have. The Marches have all the money in the world and they were hungry for blood. This town is still hungry for blood - which is exactly why whoever wrote that novel made the accusations that they did.”
“If this was a thing you'd been doing before the fire, I don't see why you wouldn't tell me.” Gregory insisted.
“I’m not sure I’ve told you about every single thing I’ve done that’s amused me through the years,” Anabel confessed. “And that was all it was. Something funny to do during parties.”
His lips pursed at the answer. He had never demanded Anabel tell him everything. But something like this. It seemed like the sort she would have. Or maybe he had only thought all these years she kept him apprised of her schemes.
Setting the necklace down on the table, he shook his head. “I'm turning it over to the lawyer so they can deal with this along with Camila’s penchant for hiding items of note.”
Anabel raised her eyebrows, her lips pursed for a moment. “Because you think I burned down the March house?”
“I would have thought you'd tell me if you had.” He answered, attempting to keep the hurt from his voice. Though his success was likely a matter of debate. “But it'd be the sensible course of action I think.”
She took a moment to breathe, to try to calm herself down. Though she imagined they would one day have to have a talk about the necklace since usually nothing stays hidden forever she did not think her husband’s first reaction would be to call the cops on her. “I don’t think that is sensible at all.”
“You don't think it's sensible to be preemptive about it?” His arms folded. “Are you planning on it just remaining hidden forever?” Like their daughter had. Creating more guilt by hiding.
“Preemptive?” Anabel motioned to the necklace. “No one except for you even know that I have that. How on earth is that preemptive? It’s just giving people a reason to point their finger. At someone who did not set that house on fire.”
“Letting a lawyer know doesn't exactly mean announcing it to the press.” Gregory stood by this. “What, you're just going to hide it back in the attic again?”
“I don’t know of many people that go to a lawyer before they’ve been accused of anything,” Anabel argued. She supposed the attic was out of the question now. Though it had done well enough for a number of years. She supposed the investigation into their daughter could always end up with someone sniffing around their house. “I’m sure I can think of another way to get rid of it.”
“What? Throw it out somewhere? Pawn it? Hope no one recognizes it?” Gregory’s frown only deepened. “You did steal it. Giving it to a lawyer for safe keeping doesn't sound like the worst idea.”
“Giving it to a lawyer makes it exist again. On paper. If I got rid of it by dropping to somewhere it will exist again, but without a way to trace it back.” Anabel spoke slowly, the idea forming as the words came out of her mouth. “Anyone that recognizes as Cora’s would only recognize it as that. She could have easily dropped it at some point and it remained uncovered.”
“It exists already. Your plan is to just hide it again?” Gregory blinked in bafflement as he looked at his wife. “What about people who might have wanted it? There was barely anything left after the fire.”
Anabel frowned. “If I remember correctly there were items that were salvaged after the fire. It’s not like this was the only item of Cora’s left.”
Bafflement turned to straight shock, his own frown in place. Cora and Ed had been their friends. “So. I'm just going to need to keep up your ruse now?” His voice flat.
“I don't know what you're going to do now,” Anabel answered honestly. Her own voice lacking its usual life. “Your assumptions are exactly what I feared the general public’s would be. I don't know where that puts us.”
“My assumptions? Because you hid this for twenty years with our family's things?” His voice pitched higher, not quite a yell but closer to it than Gregory normally got. “And your reaction to being found out is to just brush it aside again? Our daughter is hiding a dead woman's car and you're hiding a dead woman's necklace!”
“And you were immediately willing to go through the logic of ‘well if you did thing, you may have started fire’. Which is what I expected of other people, not you.” It took all her willpower not to raise her voice any higher than Gregory’s. “One is an active investigation in which a vehicle could have moved the dead woman. The necklace I have had no bearing on Cora’s or Alice’s death.”
“I never accused you of starting the fire!” His voice snapped, the anger and hurt at the accusation clear enough. “I was with you nearly all night! But I’m also not about to just hide something that could make you look guilty away when we could find a better option.”
“You implied that you couldn’t trust that I hadn’t because you would have thought I’d tell you about this.” Her own hurt showing more through the emotions on her face and the rapid way her eyes were blinking than her own voice. “There is no better option. What you are telling me is that you are willing to put my freedom on the line because you think that is the responsible thing. You are not thinking about all of the domino effects that will happen to our lives because of it. It’s been over twenty years - people don’t care about the truth, they care about someone paying for it.”
“I implied that I had been under the impression that we told each other our little jokes and pranks on other people and that I've apparently been sorely mistaken on that for years.” His teeth gritted in a way that in a rational fashion he might have been concerned. “And consulting a lawyer doesn't mean telling anything to the police. All it means is having someone in our back pocket who can fight for us if it comes out. Because I'd rather protect you than just try and ignore it.”
If Anabel didn’t feel so pushed into a corner she would have wondered how Gregory hadn’t noticed she had one or two pieces of Cora before. But as it was, she was more interested in letting the past be forgotten. “No one outside of myself and you even is aware that I have this. The more people who know the more likely it will actually become a problem. I’m sorry that I’m not jumping for joy at the prospect of making that pool of people larger.”
“No. You're just demanding I be fine with you hiding it away until someone else finds it that we can't control. And just forget all about this as if it's a lark.”
They were at an impasse. Anabel turned away from Gregory, her anger giving way to silence. She sat there quietly for a moment, trying to parse through her feelings. Eventually she gave an answer, trying hard to keep her voice neutral and even. “My answer remains the same - I don’t know what you’re going to do. If it were up for me we would get rid of the necklace.”
He wanted to rage but instead he fell to seething, watching her back as she turned away from him. Strange bubbling of betrayal and hurt swarmed to the surface and he wasn't sure what to do with it. With a wife he had trusted implicitly. “Buried things always come back up.” He warned, low and cold.
She slowly turned around. They could go back and forth all day but Anabel was not sure she had the mental energy for it. “Let’s sleep on it.”
Let's sleep on it. Aka put it to bed, put it off until one of them gave in. His frown stayed in place, necklace in hand as this time he turned around to walk out of the room. “Fine.”
Though the thought occurred that maybe his bed might not be the best place to sleep tonight.